Hershey’s on Tuesday launched a fully integrated campaign in support of its new salted caramel- and affogato-flavored Creme Bars, according to details shared with Marketing Dive. The effort includes a partnership with Katseye, the girl group whose “Wild” EP debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in August.
The Creme Bars and the new Katseye campaign were born from insights around candy innovations in Europe and consumer behavior trends around small indulgences that provide a little luxury at a small price, especially amid an environment marked by low consumer confidence.
“We've seen this huge trend on accessible premium: I want to treat myself, but I don't want it to come with a price tag, and it's not meant to signal status, either,” said Katrina Vatter, senior brand manager at Hershey’s. “If you're going to indulge and you're going to have something to treat yourself, you want it to be worth it.”
Central to the campaign is a 60-second ad set on a moving subway train. Once one of the members of Katseye bites into a Hershey’s bar, the group's song "Pinky Up" begins playing. Members of the group and other people on the train perform choreography that includes a hand motion inspired by the song's title.
Crafted by MiltonOne, the bespoke Publicis Groupe solution for The Hershey Company, and creatively led by Omnicom’s Martin, the campaign builds on a “It’s Your Happy Place” platform that launched ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics. When Hershey approached its agency team, it wanted to find a way to bring a product it believed in to younger consumers.
“How do we infuse this with Gen Z culture in a way that is going to be authentic and not cringy? I feel like this is like every brand manager's situation right now,” Vatter said.
The team was “banging [their] heads against the wall” looking for the right way into culture when a member of the creative team saw Katseye perform “Pinky Up” at Coachella. The hyperactive, electronic pop song includes the lyrics, “One day, soon, the world's gonna end… I wanna live large, right before it all burns down” and nods to a playful way of acting classy.
“It’s a CPG marketer's dream: the whole motion of ‘Pinky Up’ is a great way to integrate the product and to be able to tie the two together, and then the message of the song just resonated so well with the entire vibe,” Vatter said. “We are generally a comforting, happy brand, but I think this is just a little bit unexpected, but still super fun and playful.”
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The campaign will run across national TV, connected TV, digital video, display, earned media, influencer, out-of-home, paid social and streaming audio channels. In addition, Hershey’s will run sampling and pop-up experiences in the fall, while also partnering with Uber around select cultural moments. The partnership with Katseye, who previously featured in a viral campaign for Gap that drove retail results, continues through next year and an in-person appearance is in the works.
“We're really excited to take this not only from the video — which is really just the spark of the campaign — to then pacing it out and making sure that we're embedding this where our consumers are, not just asking them to come to us,” Vatter said of the media strategy.
For example, OOH ads translate the video’s subway scene into murals that give consumers the opportunity to do their own “Pinky Up” gesture — a way to possibly yield user-generated content. Determining how to extend a campaign beyond a TV spot to social and creator channels is the “most fun and hardest challenge of marketing today,” Vatter said.
“We've got this great video that we think is amazing on its own, but that's not enough anymore. You have to then think through how you want to resonate,” the executive said.
While filming the spot, the team captured “a ton” of assets that will be paced out on the brand and partner handles throughout the year, so that consumers aren’t seeing the same content for the entire run of the campaign. The brand is also working with influencers that have a similar vibe to Katseye as it looks to amplify the “Pinky Up” motion.
“‘Movement’ may be too strong of a word for a candy bar brand, but I want this to be the bar you have to try that everyone's going to be talking about, because it's fun to eat and it's fun to indulge,” Vatter said.
The Hershey Company saw organic net sales increase 3.6% in Q2 2026, beating Wall Street’s estimates. The company expects to see a 30% year-over-year increase in brand investment to support growth in both 2026 and 2027, including a 30% increase in new innovation items like the Creme Bars versus the first half, CEO Kirk Tanner said on a call discussing the earnings.
